Combat in Detail

This page assumes you have read the Combat Overview: fights run in rounds, one described action each, resolved by the game underneath your prose. Here is how to fight well.

What Decides a Strike

When a blow is thrown, the attacker's weapon training and physique are weighed against the defender's guard, training, and reflexes - with honest dice on both sides. Strength drives the heavy weapons; dexterity drives the quick ones; most blades want a measure of both. Constitution is your endurance: every swing, lunge, and rush spends it, and a winded fighter guards poorly. Wounds make everything worse - a hurt arm attacks badly, a hurt leg defends badly, and blood loss ends arguments on its own.

Bodyparts

Every attack names its target: head neck chest stomach arm rarm larm leg rleg lleg (a bare arm or leg picks a side for you). The torso is the easy target. Limbs are a little harder to reach and cripple what they hit. Head and neck are the hardest marks and by far the gravest - a helm is not a fashion statement.

The Four Defenses

There are four ways to meet an attack: parry (turning it aside with a drawn weapon), dodge (not being there), block (taking it on a shield), and footwork (managing the distance so the blow never arrives). Declaring one with defend spends your action but sets a deliberate, much stronger guard through the next round; without a declaration you fall back on a weaker passive guard drawn from whatever you carry.

No defense is best against everything. Each one meets different weapons very differently - a guard that shuts down one opponent may be nearly useless against another's weapon, and a canny fighter switches weapons or leads with the off-hand precisely to slip around a declared guard. Which defense answers which weapon is something characters learn the way real fighters do: by fighting, and by paying attention to how well each guard holds.

Your guard also erodes: wounds weaken it, exhaustion weakens it, and every additional attacker you face in a round finds you more exposed than the last.

Armor

Armor comes in ascending orders of protection: leather, then studded and decorated leather, then chain and ring, then plate. Heavier armor turns aside more of a blow - and different constructions weather cuts, thrusts, and crushing impacts differently.

• Armor only protects what it covers. A breastplate does nothing for your skull. Fighting an armored opponent means fighting the gaps in their wardrobe - which is exactly what bodypart targeting is for.
• Material changes the weight, not the protection. A dwarven-cut steel chain shirt guards you exactly as well as a bronze one; it is simply lighter on the march. Fine smithing buys mobility, not invulnerability.
• Armor is heavy. Walking the world in serious armor drains your endurance on foot - the fully plated knight wants a horse, which carries the burden for them. In a fight, heavy armor also makes repositioning costlier.

Weapons, Reach, and Dual Wielding

Weapons differ in more than damage: they differ in reach. A spearman can strike from paces away; a knife-fighter has to get inside. The room itself is a battlefield grid - lunge moves you across it, and where you stand determines who can reach whom.

Fighting with two weapons adds an automatic off-hand rider strike to your attacks at reduced effect, growing with your dual-wield training. dattack swaps which weapon leads - valuable, because your opponent's declared guard may answer your sword far better than it answers your dagger. Not every pairing works: off-hand weapons must be light enough to manage alongside your primary, and pole weapons need both hands. A shield and an off-hand weapon are mutually exclusive - choose your style.

Parrying has stakes of its own: blades take damage turning aside heavier weapons, and a strong exchange can disarm or even break a weapon outright.

Ground, Chases, and Getting Out

Backing away is not safety. An attacker whose reach you leave may catch you with a parting strike as you go, and anyone can surge or rush across the room after a retreating target. Chases resolve themselves through endurance - running costs, armor multiplies the cost, and the winded lose. If you truly want out, escape is the honest exit: a contest of speed, endurance, and footwork against everyone still in reach. Win it and you are free; lose it and you have spent your action standing exactly where you were.

Wounds and Treatment

Wounds are specific: a gash on the sword arm, a cracked rib, a fractured leg - each with its own consequences. Cuts and punctures bleed; crushing blows bruise and break; unnatural forces can leave burns that no bandage loves. Untreated wounds worsen with exertion. treat and bind are skills worth knowing, the Escard clinic treats for a fee, and a fight's aftermath is often a better scene than the fight itself.

Fighting the Wild

Beasts fight by the same rules with nature's own weapons - claws that rake, jaws that puncture, hooves that crush. The wilds grade their dangers: a fox is a nuisance, a bear is a serious opponent for a seasoned fighter, and worse things than bears exist. Hunt accordingly, and bring friends for the big ones.

Conduct

Combat is still roleplay. Write emotes worth reading; give your opponent a scene, not a stat check. Sparring blows are pulled by definition - and if someone stops pulling theirs mid-bout, the whole room hears about it. When a fight ends with someone helpless, what happens next - mercy, ransom, subdual, or worse - is roleplay with consequences, and the community expects it to be treated that way.